Is the patent profession elitist? What does the data say?
Each year Fellows and Associates produces a salary survey and each year we widen the scope of it to not only look at remuneration but also other demographics within the intellectual property sector. The answer to my question in the title depends greatly on how one would define elitism, so instead I would rephrase the question, does being from a particular type of background increase your chance of success in the IP sector? If it does how do we define that background?
As with any survey of this kind we are interpreting a data sample and drawing conclusions, that being said, some of our previous research across the whole profession supports our interpretations. We believe this information is important so we would hope that many more people would complete the survey each year with the aim that our results become definitive. As far as we are aware, our survey is the only one of its kind within the profession, yes, there are other studies, but there are none that ask the professional body of attorneys themselves to complete a survey and then analyse the results.
We found that over fifty percent of respondents attended either a private school (27%) or a selective state school (24%). If the proportions represented the makeup of the UK, then only 6.5% of the profession would be privately educated (Independent Schools Council figures) and very approximately 1% would come from a selective grammar school (figures are more difficult to determine here, but The Telegraph reports that there are around 120,000 pupils in state funded grammar schools which is around a fifth of the number in independent schools). I appreciate that there are arguments for and against grammar schools in respect to social mobility, but grammar school pupils tend to come from more affluent backgrounds than the national average (various news sources including the BBC).
If we consider university education, we found that over 60% of the profession attended one of only fourteen universities: Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Imperial, Bristol, Southampton, Birmingham, Manchester, York, UCL, Bath, Leeds, Sheffield and St. Andrews. This list doesn’t entirely marry with the top ten ranked universities in the UK (according to the THE) – LSE, Edinburgh, King’s and Warwick are missing. LSE is understandable given its focus, the others, less so, but the number of northern universities on the list might reflect the fast-growing IP market in the North West in particular and Yorkshire to a lesser extent. Just under a fifth of the respondents attended either Oxford or Cambridge however. This is a significant proportion if we consider that in the year 2017-18 of the approximately 1.7 million undergraduate students in the UK only 23,450 were at Oxford or Cambridge, or circa 1.4% (Higher Education Statistics Agency).
I of course understand that the universities of Oxford and Cambridge are amongst the best in the world and it would be natural to expect that they would be overrepresented to an extent but one fifth seems far too high. This is an overall picture and we know that some of the firms we work with have much more diversity of university background in recent trainee intakes, so would hope that this figure would come down over time. A more diverse university education is particularly true of firms with a regional spread of offices, where, over time, they have built close relationships with local universities.
According to The Complete University Guide, the sixth best university for mechanical engineering is the University of Strathclyde and the ninth is The University of Glasgow. For chemistry Glasgow is sixth, Liverpool is seventh, Nottingham is eighth and Warwick is tenth. None of these are represented in our list of ten – we do appreciate that the Scottish profession is relatively small and hence academically qualified graduates who do not relocate may not enter the profession as a consequence but according to the Scotsman 54% of Glasgow graduates leave the city after graduation so there could be an untapped resource in Scotland for highly qualified prospective trainees. With respect to the others I think it may well be reasonable to presume that because there are not many patent attorney firms nearby these graduates are potentially not aware of the profession. That is speculation, but I believe there would be merit in approaching these universities for graduate intake as there would potentially be less competition from other firms for excellent candidates.
The very high percentage of respondents from independent schools could in part reflect the high proportion of independently schooled undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge (from the Sutton Trust data considering admissions between 2015-7): 42% of Oxbridge places go to private school pupils. So, diversity of educational background might begin with the universities that trainees are recruited from. Almost across the board independent and grammar schools are overrepresented in the UK’s leading universities, but a widening of the intake amongst these universities will at least move the imbalance in the right direction. I would also argue that A-Level results are far less important than the weight they are currently given. If two candidates achieve a 2.1 from highly ranked universities one with three Bs and the other with three As but the former came from a deprived area and the latter from a wealthier background, then one can certainly make the argument that the former’s achievement is by far the greater. That should be the type of candidate that one would want in their firm but how far would you push the example? Three C grades versus three A grades perhaps? Assuming in both cases the quality and result of the degree is about the same does it really matter that much? A physics degree would far surpass anything learnt at A Level in any case.
Having run a recent graduate recruitment project for one of our clients, we’ve found that amongst much of the university population, many highly educated graduates have no understanding of what a patent attorney actually is. There may be an issue of self-selection. University departments and careers teams who have closer relationships with firms will advocate for the profession, meaning that candidates from those universities are over-represented in applications but also have an advantage at the early stages of interview as they have more prior knowledge of what being a patent attorney entails. If the profession only recruits candidates who know they want to be patent attorneys and have done all of the requisite research it could be significantly missing out on great candidates who have simply not considered it.
Finally, a little bit of promotion in part for Fellows and Associates but perhaps for the IP recruitment sector as a whole. There is a great deal that we can do in this area. We appreciate that firms have a considerable volume of direct applications for graduate positions, but we offer a number of advantages. if we are representing a volume of firms all at once, then you will see a wider pool of candidates, we can (and do) cast the net much more widely, for example advertising where patent attorney firms typically don’t. We can also argue the merits of a particular case, where, for example, A Level results don’t give the full picture of what a great hire a candidate might be. Oh, and one last aspect, the sheer volume of candidates can be overwhelming – if you are casting the net wider you are going to catch more fish, and spending your time searching the nets is not the best use of your time but it might be the best use of ours.
Pete Fellows is the Managing Director of Fellows and Associates a specialist intellectual property sector recruitment company.
You can see the full salary survey at www.fellowssurveyresults.com